Current view- MySQL+OO good?

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MSPhobe
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Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by MSPhobe »

Years ago, I went down the "Use MySQL, with OO as front end" path... happily, with good results for some projects.

My OO work has been a little less active for a few years.

Doing a quick Google search on the present state of MySQL + OO was not encouraging.

I would be delighted to learn if there are OO people who, 2018, are still happy using MySQL + OO?

This would be on a Windows 10 (sigh) machine.

Apologies for raising several questions in one post... I hope it makes sense, in this case? Any and all comments welcome!

I went to mysql.com and was a little overwhelmed. I am hoping that the "MySQL On Windows" package (Under the "Community/ GPL" branch) is "the way to go" for the serious Windows home user? (https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/windows/)

At the OpenOffice.org site, found....

"MySQL Connector for OpenOffice.org"...
https://extensions.openoffice.org/en/pr ... nofficeorg

... from 2009... flagged "Not maintained", and compatibilty with OpenOffice 4 given as "Unknown". What's this all about? Do we connect to MySQL differently these days?

Thanks for whatever pointers, "pro" or "con"! forum people can provide!
OpenOffice 4.1.1 on Windows 7, plus others on XP. "Native", and as FE to MySQL
eremmel
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Re: Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by eremmel »

I've not particular knowledge about MySQL with OO, but you might explore the generic ODBC interface of OO with ODBC connector of MySQL or use the generic jdbc interface of Base with a jdbc driver for MySQL.
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MSPhobe
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Re: Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by MSPhobe »

After DAYS spent on this, I've reached some conclusions.

Background: I've used OO + MySQL together before... happily. (Win XP days, using the OO MySQL connector.) Indeed, I have an important database set up that way which is now an orphan, which is a bit of a problem in itself. I LIKED doing that database that way, because I had crash-recovery procedures that I trusted in place. (No, I don't trust the ooBase "backup" "system". (My old OpenOffice Base + MySQL may have suffered from some of the problems I see today, by maybe I hadn't noticed? (In particular the problems I'll relate in modifying the database schema))

Come the Brave New World of OO 4.x and the current-1-18 MySQL and dog's dinner Windows 10, and it Just Won't Work for me. Well. Not in a way I want to fight with.

I DID finally "do it". (More in a moment.) But the near absence of anything useful Google Search can find with MySQL and OO (or Libre Office) Base since about 2014 was a red flag I should have taken more notice of.

Jan 18, Windows 10, OO 4.1.4, (broadly following my old pages, which are at...

http://sheepdogguides.com/fdb/fdb9mysql1.htm

I...

Installed MySQL. It came with an ODBC connector. I subsequently, without hassle, added a JDBC connector. (That isn't offered even under the "custom" type install, but can be added via a download from MySQL.org)

Got to grips again with managing the underlying MySQL Server (Windows service... and there's now also a MySQL Router service which I THINK you don't need for basic stuff... but I'm not sure. (Install it, to be safe, but don't turn it on, (services.msc, "Start") unless something won't work without it?)

Got to grips again with MySQLWorkbench. (The "Model" is, sort of, a "plan" or "design" for a database... and you push it to an ACTUAL, MySQL database with "Forward Engineer". And you update you model, after any direct tinkering with the ACTUAL database (not the plan thereof) with "Reverse Engineer". Probably a neat system... once you get your head around it! But I had trouble changing the length of an existing text-varchar field. I also STILL have trouble with which user/password to use where in the MySQL world, and avoiding using the root user for everything.)

ANYWAY.... Got that far. Got a MySQL installation in place. Got a small MySQL database "created" (MySQL term). Got a table in it, with a few records.

Spent many, MANY hours trying to "connect to existing ((MySQL)) database" from ooBase via ODBC. Got close. Never quite got "there".

Went over to trying to use JDBC.

Installed JDBC connector... on system, and then "in" Base.

Tried "connect to existing ((MySQL)) database" from ooBase again. Thank you ooBase team for the "MySQL" entry in the dropdown in the first page of the "Connect to existing database" wizard. (Use it! (If trying this at home.) It help you (hides the messy details of) creating an arcane string of instructions for the JDBC connector). In the second step of the wizard, elect "Connect using JDBC". Server: localhost. 1-18, if you installed the MySQL JDBC driver your ooBase as I did, the "driver class" is "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver". (Test it! Get that much working, and you can test that much here!)

The rest is pretty obvious. (Ha! That's why I spent DAYS! What I mean is that I don't have time for the rest just now... especially as there seems to be so little interest in what was a great combination!)

Those are the highlights. I hope you have better luck if you tackle this worthy objective yourself. If you do, I'd love to hear (email via site cited above best) how it goes for you.
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Villeroy
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Re: Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by Villeroy »

MySQL is perfectly well documented, but there is no recipe for running servers of any kind. You need knowledge about your operating system and your network environment. This is the stuff well paid IT jobs are made of.

OOo is a separate application which did not change much during the past 10 years. Apart from minor bug fixes and questionable additions to the GUI, OpenOffice is almost the same application as in 2008 (start of OOo 3.0). The receipe to connect this end user application to any kind of connectable database is:
File>New>Database...
[X] Connect to existing database
If you can find the type of database explicitly mentioned in the "Type" list box, then use it. Otherwise you should have prepared a JDBC or ODBC connection. If not, do this first.
After you have saved the Base document, you see the database tables in the tables container and the connection URL in the status bar:
protocol:[subprotocol:]///host_name[:Port#]
jdbc:mysql:192.169.01
jdbc:mysql:Host_Name
odbc:My_Connection (the connection named "My_Connection" is set up on system level using some ODBC managment tool or simple configuration files)

ODBC is set up on system level. The ODBC setup includes all info that is required to reach some database server.
For JDBC as I know it, you download one or more *.jar files, add them to the OpenOffice class path (see Java options) and then compose an URL starting with jdbc:
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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MSPhobe
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Re: Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by MSPhobe »

Many thanks, Villeroy, for those encouraging words covering some of the general principles involved.

The devil, however, is in the details. As you know, lots of things that "should" work don't. Sometimes because, even after days of work, I still haven't realized that the 5th character on the 4th line of the 12th configuration script should be a " not a ;.... and sometimes because they just DON'T work.

ODBC: The current MySQL connector is version 5.xx

The ooBase documentation says somewhere that it is fit for ODBC up to version 3.

===
I'm not smart... but I am stubborn. I have, in the past, using the now unsupported ooBase MySQL connector had ooBase and MySQL working together to the entire extent of my wants. (As documented at http://sheepdogguides.com/fdb/fdb9mysql1.htm

But even with my stubborn streak, this time around, for now, defeat.
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Villeroy
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Re: Current view- MySQL+OO good?

Post by Villeroy »

Use JDBC.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
Ubuntu 18.04 with LibreOffice 6.0, latest OpenOffice and LibreOffice
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